The Greatest of Sins

by Christine Merrill

‘If you have nothing to say for yourself, then I must assume I have guessed the truth.’

  He shook his head again, as though trying to turn from something unpleasant. ‘I cannot tell you. I simply cannot. You must trust me when I say that it was a horrible misunderstanding on my part.’

  ‘I must trust you?’ She stood and backed away from the bed. Even now, after all she had learned, she was not sure that she could resist him if he kissed her again. ‘I trusted you before, when you said that it was never to be. And look where that has got me. I am dishonouring myself and betraying a man who needs me, who wants me and who, as you have pointed out, has never given me a reason to do this. Worse yet, he is ill. Conveniently unconscious because of the drugs you are giving him, so that we would not be interrupted. I am the one who has made the mistake, Sam.’

  ‘Evie.’ He spoke it as if he thought a name from childhood was a dispensation. ‘At least do not doubt my treatment. Look in your books. You will see I mean him no harm.’

  ‘Enough.’ Perhaps he was right about that one thing. But it proved only that he could answer an insult to his profession more easily than his assault on her honour. ‘I am sorry. But I do not think it is for leaving you, Sam. It is for listening to you in the first place.’ And with that, she went back down the hall to sit at the side of her unconscious fiancé.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Sam next returned to the patient’s room, it was mid-afternoon. The duke was waking. And his nurse had not left his side since leaving Sam’s. She’d held his hand, mopped his fevered brow. When Sam had listened at the open door, she was talking to the sleeping man in the low tones of a lover.

  Now that St Aldric was conscious, she supported his head and gave him sips of iced water, tempted him with bites of custard and tried in all ways short of full confession to make up for laying with another man.

  In response, St Aldric was looking up at her with the devotion of a hound, albeit a hound that had stuck his face in a beehive.

  The swelling was still bad. But there was a brightness in the duke’s eyes that came from returning strength instead of fever. The worst was not over, but it was clear he would fight off the illness.

  Sam had been pacing the hall for hours, trying to come up with some explanation that might mollify his lover and explain his sudden change of heart. She thought him a jealous swine who had seduced her to spoil the happiness of his brother. He was not sure, from minute to minute, how he felt about her darling Michael. But Sam was certain that man’s eventual happiness had nothing to do with what had happened in the bed down the hall.

  He could offer nothing, other than the truth. Your father is a liar. He never cared for me as I thought. He was old St Aldric’s toady, and he is willing to put your happiness aside to gain the favour of the Saint.

  Her father had but to deny it, as any sane man would. Then Sam would blurt the truth of what had happened and fall even lower in her estimation. She would see him either as a man low enough to lust after his own sister, or one who would make up a despicable lie, slandering her father to mask his own indifference.

  He had sworn to Thorne that he would not speak. And he had done it on his true father’s name. As if he could borrow that family’s honour when it was convenient, and put it aside when it proved troublesome. Perhaps he was as fickle as she thought. That morning, he had been ready to make peace with St Aldric and, an hour later, he had cuckolded him while he slept. There was nothing to say that would explain any of it. He could hardly understand it himself.

  He went into the sick room and stood by the bed. ‘And how are you feeling after your rest, your Grace?’

  From the opposite side, Evie stared at him, as protective as a lioness with a cub. ‘He is doing much better, now that I am here to help,’ she said, all but accusing him of doping the man insensible for his own nefarious purposes.

  ‘I am sure he is.’ It was what he’d have told any worried housewife, on visiting her husband’s sick bed. Women did not like to be told that all illnesses could not be cured with love and herbs.

  ‘It seems I have a ministering angel,’ St Aldric croaked, managing a smile.

  ‘You are most fortunate,’ Sam agreed. ‘But you must forgive me if I send her from the room so that I might examine you.’

  ‘Can I not stay?’ She asked it sweetly enough, but then she turned her face from St Aldric and looked daggers at him, as though she expected Sam to do away with his rival the moment she had cleared the door.

  ‘Do not worry, my love. I am confident that my brother the physician will settle me in no time. And then, perhaps, you might come back and read to me.’ The duke gave her a pale imitation of the smile he had worn at their engagement ball.

  ‘Of course, darling.’ She left reluctantly, pausing in the doorway to give him one last lingering glance, as though a quarter-hour examination would be an eternity. It was like trying to part turtle doves.

  The little hypocrite.

  As soon as the door was closed, Sam turned back to the patient, as eager to get this over with as they were to be rid of him. ‘May I have permission to examine you, your Grace?’

  The duke cocked his swollen head to the side, considering. ‘Perhaps the drugs have clouded my mind, but I distinctly remember asking you to dispense with the formality of my title. There is no one to hear you, you know. You could call me anything you liked. You could even argue with me, should you have a reason to.’

  Despite himself, the corners of Sam’s mouth twitched in amusement. ‘Do not tempt me, your Grace.’

  Another sigh from the man on the bed. ‘Very well, then. But please stop asking for my permission before you touch me. You know you have it. Just make me well.’

  ‘I will do my best.’ He lifted the sheet. Judging by the extent of the inflammation, it was likely that the duke would never be himself again. He carefully replaced the sheet and reached for his stethoscope.

  ‘Doing your best,’ the duke said grimly. ‘That is no answer at all, is it?’

  The patient’s chest and heart were clear. And his ears seemed undamaged as well. The situation was far from hopeless, although he doubted the duke would see it that way. ‘Do you wish me to lie?’

  St Aldric managed a false smile. ‘Perhaps I do, if it means that there is a way to prevent the discussion we must have.’

  Sam smiled grudgingly as well. ‘I doubt it will give you comfort. I am not a very good liar, you see. I find that I get in no end of trouble trying to conceal the truth.’

  ‘With Evelyn?’

  Sam started so much that he dropped his stethoscope.

  ‘You are right,’ the duke confirmed. ‘You are not a very good liar at all.’

  Damn him. And damn his understanding nature. Did he not see that the whole situation was more complicated than that? And, once again, Sam had a strange desire to have a brother much like this one: older and hopefully wiser. Someone in whom he might confide the truth.

  Then he remembered that he was the physician and not the patient. He was supposed to be the font of wisdom and comfort, not the receiver of it. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ replied the duke in an even tone. ‘But I have got you sufficiently off guard that I might get the truth out of you on my condition. We will discuss one thing or the other. What is my prognosis, doctor?’

  ‘You should make a nearly full recovery,’ Sam said, still not wanting to be pinned to an untruth.

  ‘Nearly,’ St Aldric answered flatly. ‘And what part of me is not to return from this? Do me the courtesy of saying it, please.’

  ‘There is no guarantee, one way or the other,’ Sam prefaced, still not sure he wanted to commit. ‘But in some cases such as yours, there is a loss of potency, or a chance of sterility.’

  ‘I see.’ There was a sort of dangerous quiet in the room and St Aldric’s easy manner disappeared.

  For a moment, Sam feared what any man would fear upon delivering bad news to a powerful man
. There was a tendency in these things to kill the messenger. Not literally, of course. But a rumor of misdiagnosis, or malpractice, from a man of this stature would be enough to ruin him.

  But the storm, if there was to be one, did not break. The tension grew and Sam added, ‘There is no guarantee.’

  ‘That will be all, for now, Doctor.’ The duke glanced towards the door.

  ‘It will be weeks, perhaps months, or longer, before you know the truth. You need to regain your strength first.’

  ‘Before I attempt congress with Evelyn?’

  Sam brought his hand down hard on the bedside table, unable to control his sudden and violent reaction to the thought.

  ‘I know you would delay that indefinitely, if you could. Why you waste as much time as you do trying to heal me, I do not understand.’

  ‘You asked me to,’ Sam said.

  The duke gave an empty laugh. ‘And they call me a Saint. Perhaps nobility runs in our family.’

  ‘Our family has nothing to do with this,’ Sam said stubbornly. ‘I helped you because you needed it. And now I am telling you what I would tell any man in your condition. Do not give up hope without a reason. It may take some time before we know if you are yourself again.’

  ‘And how will I know?’ Michael asked.

  ‘If you father a child,’ Sam said, cursing his own inability to offer more. ‘There are no tests beyond this.’

  ‘And if I cannot father a child?’

  ‘Then it might be the fault of illness. Or it might have been the truth before. Or it might be the fault of the woman you are with.’ Sam resisted the urge to shrug, for that was hardly a gesture that inspired confidence. ‘You might have a son by the New Year. Or not.’

  ‘You are useless,’ the duke said. ‘Worse than useless. Get out.’

  And now he would call for another doctor. Someone who would lie to him, or bring some odd tincture that offered hope. ‘You want me gone because I will not tell you what you wish to hear? You asked for the truth. It is not my fault if you do not like it.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘No.’ He was refusing a direct order from a peer. It was likely professional suicide. It was illogical as well. If he cared at all for a future with the woman he loved, it made no sense to encourage this man to bed her.

  But damnation, the man was his brother.

  And his brother was a duke. St Aldric’s glare was icy, and superior, a reminded of the difference in their ranks. ‘How dare you refuse me?’

  Sam sat in the chair at the bedside that Evelyn had occupied. ‘I dare because I am more than a doctor to you. You wanted family, did you? Well, I have little experience with it. But from what I hear, family does not abandon family at moments like this.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I can say that I am sorry.’

  ‘And what does that help?’

  ‘You did not let me finish. I could say I was sorry that my brother is such a great blockhead. You are worrying about a future that is not certain.’

  St Aldric’s eyes were wide and near to panic. ‘But if it is the future, do you understand what it means?’

  ‘That all flesh is grass? That the plans of men are not equal to the machinations of God or fate or random chance?’ Sam glared down at the man in the bed. ‘I have given worse news to better men than you. I have watched children die. And here you are, grieving for ones that are not even conceived. I suggest, Michael, that you accept the fact that there are things that a title will not protect you from. If you are only a saint when your faith is not tested, then you are no saint at all.’

  The duke was shaking his head as though he could refuse the future he might face and have another. ‘I never asked to be a saint.’

  ‘But you have been doing a fine job up ‘til now,’ Sam replied. ‘The only prescription I can offer you is this. You must not worry, Michael.’ He put a steadying hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘We will deal with other matters if they arise.’

  The patient seemed somewhat mollified by his confidence that all problems could be solved with time. But that was because he could not see the confusion in Sam’s heart. He had said we, as if he meant to be there. And before that, he had called the duke by his given name. Was there some brotherly feeling, after all? Or perhaps Evelyn was not the only one who felt guilt.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘The duke will be fine. I will be fine. Everything will be fine.’

  What a weak word that was and how unlikely to be true. When she had left Michael’s room her father had been lurking at the head of the stairs, eager for any news she could give him.

  She had told him what he wished to hear. The duke was healing nicely and in excellent spirits. He would soon make a full recovery. She had never felt closer to him.

  She had not the heart to tell Father the truth. She was not even sure she knew what the truth was herself. Sam had been evasive, when it came to the final outcome of Michael’s illness. Michael was distracted, smiling to put her at ease, but clearly worried. And she was torn between the two of them: wanting one, and promised to another.

  Now she was feeling the strain of unending cheerfulness in the face of problems and bemoaning, once again, the weakness of the men around her that they needed women to be happy when there was no reason to be. It must give them comfort to know that, in any situation, their wives and daughters acted like dolls with cheerful faces and lips painted shut.

  If she married Michael, she had best get used to it. It was what he wished from her. He needed a wife who would smile and nod, and be as amiable as he was. She had managed several hours of it, just now, as she had tended to him. Keeping his spirits up was much more tiring than actually treating him would have been.

  For the most part, she had talked nonsense. She had described the weather to him, told him about a bonnet that she meant to purchase on her next outing to Bond Street and kept him well informed on the exploits of Diana the kitten, who had caught her first mouse and been unsure what to do with it.

  He had closed his eyes and smiled through most of it, informing her in a hoarse voice that it made him feel better just hearing the sound of her voice. But there was a furrow in his brow that made her suspect he would as soon have been alone and in silence.

  How would he have felt if she’d given him any inkling of what had happened between her and Sam only hours before? He was dispirited enough without her begging forgiveness for her betrayal and informing him of the need to break the engagement immediately.

  And now Sam was alone in the room with him. Although she had asked him not to, it was possible that he was telling the duke everything, settling the matter of her future between them. If not that, then what did he have to do that she could not witness?

  She returned to the sitting room and glanced at the medical book Sam had been reading. If he was not in any way worried about the outcome, then what need did he have to study? She had heard that it was more serious for adults. But how, exactly? Michael had looked miserable, but no worse than she had been when she’d had this. She sat down on the couch and took up the book from the cushion where it rested, opening it to the marked page and reading what he had read.

  ‘Evie!’ It was Sam again, back from his examination. And he was using the warning tone that hinted she was meddling in things she did not understand. But the information was quite clear, as were the likely repercussions.

  She closed the book closed with a snap of the cover and stared at him, searching for any signs that he was treating this patient differently than any other. ‘You have been underestimating the severity of the disease, Sam. Or have you merely understated it?’

  ‘It does no good to alarm the patient overly on a thing that cannot be predicted or changed.’ His expression was grave, but there was nothing in it that indicated another reason to avoid the truth.

  ‘But you must understand how serious the matter is.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘A man’s potency is always of great import
.’

  ‘I mean to Michael, specifically.’

  ‘Because you were to marry him?’

  After what had happened, it was right to speak of that in the past tense. But with this fresh piece of news, her conscience strained in a different direction. ‘It is of concern to me, of course,’ she said, cautiously. ‘But for St Aldric? You might not see …’

  ‘Because I am only a bastard,’ Sam added.

  ‘Do not speak so,’ Evie snapped. ‘It is unworthy of you. The man is your brother.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ Sam reminded her. It was a matter-of-fact correction. The anger that had been present in his voice before was gone.

  ‘Then you should have, at least, half a filial sympathy for him,’ she said. ‘Michael has spoken to me frequently on the subject of his family. Or, more importantly, his lack of family. He is quite conscious of the fact that there are no other members of it, save for you. It is why, when I realised the truth, I insisted that Father tell you immediately.’

  ‘For him,’ Sam said, as though this were some damning bit of evidence and not common sense.

  ‘And for you. You deserved to know as well.’ Even if he was being an infant in worrying about the particulars, it had been cruel of Father to raise him in ignorance. ‘Right now, I am explaining why it was important for Michael. And why he is so eager to know you better. He is very alone.’

  ‘We are all alone,’ Sam said, as though it did not matter.

  ‘But if we need not be?’ she said, hoping that a little encouragement might make him understand. ‘Discovering he has a half-brother eased his mind. But it will not help him in his most important job. He needs, above all else, to produce an heir.’

  ‘For him, or for you?’ Sam asked, the jealousy she had longed to see two weeks ago in full flower. ‘Because if you wish children, I would be happy to provide you with them.’ He was looking at her hungrily now and she could not decide whether to be excited or appalled.

  ‘He needs a son for the sake of the people he is responsible to,’ she said, shaking her head in disgust. ‘Think of something other than yourself for a moment. He has tenants, servants and a seat in Parliament. Who will take on the responsibility of these, if he has no son to follow him?’